There was a time when Jane looked at you with stars in her eyes. Now she will barely look at you at all. She flinches away, makes herself scarce, and you wonder what has changed.

You'd been kidnapped, held for unknown reasons at the time, until you figured out it was all about Jane, like everything else in your life was. You'd made your own escape without being rescued, and Jane had left you.

She'd left you with someone else and kept going to track down the man who'd hurt you.

And now she won't look at you anymore. Does she feel she's failed you? Does she worry that it's your closeness that made you a target? You would do anything to keep her safe, and all she does is pull away.


She still comes over. She's been guarding your house at night, dozing on your couch, thinking you don't know she's there, thinking you can't smell the delicious scent of lavender wafting through the house, carried in on her skin. You don't know the last time she had a good sleep. She's half-asleep on the couch when you come into the living room.

"There are officers outside," you point out, pulling the blanket off of her.

"Not good enough," Jane's voice is sharp, but you think it's herself she's reprimanding for not being vigilant enough last time.

"You need to sleep," you remind her gently. "Come on." You help her to her feet, and she watches you, wide-eyed and somehow afraid. She follows you placidly to your bedroom. "Get changed," you order, and she does, meekly compliant which is a testament to her exhaustion. You hold up the covers, and she hesitates before joining you.

"I won't let anything happen to you. Never again," she says fiercely.

"But you are," you tell her, heedless of the grammatical incorrectness of the phrasing. "You're happening to me. Or not happening. You're pulling away from me, and it feels like I'm shedding a limb."

You feel her freeze beside you. She reaches for you and hesitates again. Your heart breaks again. She never used to worry about touching you. Never seemed to mind that you flinched the first few times, until you became accustomed to her touch.

"It's for your safety. Someone is after me and they know..." Jane lets out a shaky breath which you can feel fan across your face; she hasn't been this close to you in a very long time. She finally lets her hand land on your ribs, wrapping her arm around you. You feel safe for the first time in months. "They know what you mean to me," she says. "They know how to hurt me."

"I was the only one hurt," you point out.

"You weren't," Jane says, surprisingly gently. "They knew the only way to really get to me was through you, so they know what you mean to me. To keep you safe, I have to... to love you less. To make you less of a target."

"That doesn't make sense."

"It does," Jane insists. "Remember what happened to Cavanaugh."

"I'm not your wife or child, Jane," you point out, wondering how her usual thought process had become so convoluted.

"It feels like you are," Jane says in a very small voice.

"Your wife? It feels like I'm your wife?" you ask, wanting clarification. You don't need another mother. You have a sufficient amount of mothers. You don't want Jane, of all people, to think of you as a child, let alone her own child. The implications are baffling and heinous.

"A little," you can feel Jane shrug, try to pull away but you cover her hand, keeping her arm around you. You've waited this long, you can't let her go so easily. "I just... no matter who I date, no matter who you date, you're still the person I want to talk to at the end of each day. You're still the person I want to come home to. And I know you don't want that, and you don't want me feeling like that, but it's obvious to everyone you're the person who matters most to me." Your chest aches; Jane is never sweet to you like this. She never expresses emotions, only extends physical affection in lieu.

"What if I wanted that?" you ask, and Jane freezes again.

"Then you'd be even more of a target to my enemies," Jane grumbles, but her voice is soft, and she doesn't protest when you roll into her, moving to press your face against her shoulder, her arm still wrapped around you.

"You need to sleep. And this is the safest place I could ever possibly be," you tell her, and she nods, pulls you closer. In the morning, when Jane is rested and has had coffee, you can unpack all of her faulty logic. Maybe you can win her back. But for now her breathing steadies itself and you call feel her relax next to you. You place one kiss, slow and gentle, so as not to wake her, on her cheek, then settle in to watch over her for the night.